Asian Works of Art

在合并的雙磚上做地子，然後精雕細琢，手部與面部的細節尤爲精緻，十指纖纖，調湯撒鹽；烏髮堆起雙環望仙髻，玲瓏浮凸；窄袖衫子，长裙曳地，裙腰落至酥胸以下——從題材、服飾到雕刻手法，絕似河北曲陽王處直墓出土的彩繪浮雕《散乐图》、《奉侍图》。

形體凸出于平面的雕塑方法，可以上溯至麥積山石窟的北周“薄肉塑”飛天，唐人更進一步，在形體凸出的基礎上，面部凸出于形體，加深視覺冲擊，最具代表性的當屬盧芹齋1936年售予波士頓藝術博物館的唐代侍女石雕墓門，單憑女郎被盤摸到包漿的圓臉蛋兒，即知其對於觀者的强烈吸引力。

衣食住行的人間生活，常見於唐墓，即使貴爲公主王孫，也大多以壁畫描摹，能如五代王處直墓一般，以雕塑手法呈現，珍罕不必言説。本品由雙磚合并，每磚背部中心留有梯形槽，當爲榫卯接口。这与湖南郴州的五代冯晖墓极其相似——冯晖墓的甬道两侧墙壁嵌有28对彩绘乐舞人物浮雕。

就整件拍品的高度而言，如果不是固定於墻面甬道，用作壁畫；那麽極可能是石椁的内壁（石椁加庑殿顶的整體高度近2米，本品高1.1米），畢竟侍女是石椁畫像的標準配置。而且唐初以後，石椁的壁畫從升仙轉變爲世俗，大多爲宮廷生活場景。

本品出自德克薩斯州達拉斯十大豪宅之一的普雷斯顿谷城堡（Preston Hollow French Chateau），作爲德州最美的法式建築之一，著錄于許多室内設計刊物，還是九十年代桌游《神秘宅邸》的封面。城堡舊主富商Ralph E及Bonnie B Purvis夫婦于2004年搬離達拉斯，遷居加拿大農場和歐洲別業，去世後，城堡中的部分藏品由本地拍行J. Garrett接手沽清，現藏家由此購得。据該行，本品約在1970年購入。

Formed by joining two bricks, then painstakingly carved in relief. The hands and facial features are rendered with exceptional delicacy, captured in the act of seasoning a pot of soup. The figure wears a narrow-sleeved jacket and a long skirt trailing to the ground, with the waistline raised to just below the bust. The work closely resembles the painted marble reliefs excavated from the tomb of Wang Chuzhi at Quyang, Hebei.

This sculptural method, in which the figure projects from a flat ground, can be traced back to the Northern Zhou “thin relief” flying apsaras at the Maijishan Grottoes. Tang artisans further advanced the technique by emphasizing the face beyond the body, intensifying visual impact. A representative example is the Tang dynasty stone relief of a tomb gate sold by C. T. Loo to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1936.

Scenes of everyday life in the court are common in Tang royal tombs. But even for princesses and princes, such imagery was usually rendered in murals. Sculptural treatment, as seen in the Five Dynasties tomb of Wang Chuzhi, is exceedingly rare. This work is composed of two joined bricks, each with a trapezoidal mortise carved into the center of the reverse, suggesting a mortise-and-tenon construction. Given the overall height of the piece, it was likely not fixed to a corridor wall as a mural. Rather, it was probably installed on the interior wall of a stone sarcophagus. Attendant figures were a standard feature in sarcophagus imagery. Moreover, from the early Tang onward, sarcophagus decoration shifted from transcendental themes to secular scenes, most often depicting courtly life.